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Punished Chuck
Dec 27, 2010

Out of curiosity, what are you looking for from tags that you can't get by shelving a book on multiple shelves? Is it just how much of a pain it is to create a new shelf and individually add each book, instead of just typing something into the "tag" column like on librarything (which is a much better system, admittedly)?

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chglcu
May 17, 2007

I'm so bored with the USA.

deety posted:

I've been trying to bring up tags in the feedback forum for years now. Every time the situation comes up, most folks in that group try to tell me that the shelves are tags. It's like beating my head against a wall.

They're right. This is actually one thing I don't like. I'd like to be able to organize my shelves hierarchically, but I can't since they're just tags.

WeaponGradeSadness posted:

Out of curiosity, what are you looking for from tags that you can't get by shelving a book on multiple shelves? Is it just how much of a pain it is to create a new shelf and individually add each book, instead of just typing something into the "tag" column like on librarything (which is a much better system, admittedly)?

Just going to mention that you can batch edit and add things to shelves, so you don't have to do it one at a time.

chglcu fucked around with this message at 07:00 on Mar 6, 2012

Poutling
Dec 26, 2005

spacebunny to the rescue

Conduit for Sale! posted:

Shelves are nice but Goodreads really really really needs a tag system. I mean sure I can shelve Lies of Locke Lamora for instance as fantasy. But if there was a tag system I could tag it with like thieves, con artists, orphans, horse piss, whatever. I'm not gonna make a horse piss shelf because really I only think Lies of Locke Lamora would fit there. Tags would really make the recommendation system 1000% better.

Just out of curiosity, why would you want to tag a book 'horse piss' if you knew it would only apply to this book? Is it for the sake of remembering that there was horse piss involved in this book somehow? And if so, why wouldn't you just use the review system as a way to jog your memory of specific things that caught your attention about the book?

I'm honestly curious because when I tag things on a blog for instance it's for the purpose of categorizing which I assume is what they are trying to get you to do with the bookshelves. I think some of the most prolific goodreads posters have like 50 or 60 bookshelves at a time. I do agree that the shelving is a clumsy way of categorizing but it does help in the recommendation process, though I haven't gotten specific to the point that other people have (having a shelf devoted only to families sharing secrets, for instance). I do have a shelf devoted only to books set in boarding schools or universities and that seems to do a fairly good job in recommending similar items.

naptalan
Feb 18, 2009

Poutling posted:

Just out of curiosity, why would you want to tag a book 'horse piss' if you knew it would only apply to this book? Is it for the sake of remembering that there was horse piss involved in this book somehow? And if so, why wouldn't you just use the review system as a way to jog your memory of specific things that caught your attention about the book?

Well, I think he meant more like "that is the only book I have read about horse piss, but I would be interested in finding more books about horse piss", which is a valid point, except that the shelving system works fine for that.

For example, I'm currently reading Tomorrow, When The War Began by John Marsden. The book page is here, and on the right you can click "see top shelves" to see everything that the book has been shelved under, sorted by popularity.

Going through the list, I can see that one person has tagged the book as "shipwrecks". A bit strange, since the book has nothing to do with shipwrecks, but you can click on the shipwrecks shelf to go to a page with all the books shelved as shipwrecks. It's actually a pretty neat page and also includes tagged quotes and lists.

I see there is no horse-piss shelf at the moment. But there could be! All you need to do is shelve. :colbert:

That being said, there are a few changes to the shelving system I'd like to see which would make Goodreads a thousand times better:
- The ability to order and group shelves, so you could put all the shelves like "shipwrecks", "earthquakes", and "volcanos" under the heading "disasters" rather than have them all cluttering the shelf list
- The ability to cross reference "horse-piss" and "shipwrecks" to find all books about horses pissing on crashed ships

As far as I know there's no way to do the latter, and definitely no way to do the former. Please correct me if I'm wrong, though!

deety
Aug 2, 2004

zombies + sharks = fun

WeaponGradeSadness posted:

Out of curiosity, what are you looking for from tags that you can't get by shelving a book on multiple shelves?

Shelves, as they're implemented on GR, are a different thing than tags because they're the main way of navigating your book list. If you make as many shelves as you may want tags, you can no longer see them all down the left margin. Then you're stuck clicking back and forth between multiple pages in this massive, mostly alphabetical list in order to do anything. Those of us who want to have quick access to our most frequently used shelves can't have more than the fifty or so that will show on the book list without pagination. That sounds like a lot, but it really isn't if you read a variety of subjects and would also like to use tracking shelves to mark things like library books, ebooks, or whatever.

I really want tags to help me keep track of nonfiction subjects. If Goodreads had a reasonable tagging system, one that didn't also function as site navigation, I could easily keep track of every book I've encountered that has info on wooly mammoths or the Monmouth Rebellion or Scott's trip to the South Pole. I'm not going to make shelves for such specific subjects, but I really want to tag that kind of thing. I can detail all of a book's contents in the review or private notes area, but that doesn't do much good in terms of grouping because you can't search or sort by those fields.

deety fucked around with this message at 08:58 on Mar 6, 2012

Poutling
Dec 26, 2005

spacebunny to the rescue

deety posted:

Shelves, as they're implemented on GR, are a different thing than tags because they're the main way of navigating your book list. If you make as many shelves as you may want tags, you can no longer see them all down the left margin. Then you're stuck clicking back and forth between multiple pages in this massive, mostly alphabetical list in order to do anything. Those of us who want to have quick access to our most frequently used shelves can't have more than the fifty or so that will show on the book list without pagination. That sounds like a lot, but it really isn't if you read a variety of subjects and would also like to use tracking shelves to mark things like library books, ebooks, or whatever.

I really want tags to help me keep track of nonfiction subjects. If Goodreads had a reasonable tagging system, one that didn't also function as site navigation, I could easily keep track of every book I've encountered that has info on wooly mammoths or the Monmouth Rebellion or Scott's trip to the South Pole. I'm not going to make shelves for such specific subjects, but I really want to tag that kind of thing. I can detail all of a book's contents in the review or private notes area, but that doesn't do much good in terms of grouping because you can't search or sort by those fields.

This makes sense to me, I can see why you would want that. I do see how the shelving system would get cumbersome when you get into the high hundreds with books and need to find one quickly.

chglcu
May 17, 2007

I'm so bored with the USA.
Could you get most of the functionality you want through a combination of setting non-specific shelves as sticky so they're sorted first and using the shelf cloud for tag-like stuff?

deety
Aug 2, 2004

zombies + sharks = fun

It's something I've considered, but it would be a major pain in the rear end to revamp if their system changes. Sticky shelves were introduced as a quick fix after GR, without warning, removed dashes from the beginning of existing shelf names and made it so that you can no longer begin a shelf name with a dash (some copy/pasted characters, like em dashes, still work for now). Goodreads did that to get more consistency in shelf names, most likely to help out with the recommendation system. People had been using those dashes to sort their shelves, and a few of my friends were forced to reorganize their whole shelving systems.

Since GR has already shown a willingness to change a user's shelf names, I'm really hesitant about putting a lot of effort into using that new sticky feature only to have some other major change take place. I just know that I'm going to finish categorizing a thousand books one day before they announce subshelves or something.

It's a lot more likely that I'll just work over my old LibraryThing account, use that for categorization, and limit my Goodreads activity to reviewing. LibraryThing is ugly as hell and their social features are awful, but their system is better from a cataloging perspective.

Conduit for Sale!
Apr 17, 2007

Poutling posted:

Just out of curiosity, why would you want to tag a book 'horse piss' if you knew it would only apply to this book? Is it for the sake of remembering that there was horse piss involved in this book somehow? And if so, why wouldn't you just use the review system as a way to jog your memory of specific things that caught your attention about the book?

It was mostly a joke for people who've read Lies of Locke Lamora but like I said, with tags I could tag the book with thieves or con artists or whatever and then if I want another book with thieves or con artists I could check what else has been tagged with those things.

It is essentially the same as shelves, except nobody is gonna make a thieves or con artists shelf unless they're really into those particular things. I personally just shelve it as fantasy and call it a day. I imagine most do the same.

When I'm thinking of tags I'm mainly thinking of last.fm's tags. I know LT uses tags but it also looks exactly like LiveJournal which also had tags hmm... Like, look at all the stuff (weird or not - as a side note gently caress anybody that tagged The Weeknd with dubstep) that people have tagged this relatively lesser known artist with; if it were a book nobody would make shelves for all that crap. If last.fm were like Goodreads you'd just shelve The Weeknd as "rnb" and move on.

I think the main differences between shelves and tags really is just psychological and ease of use. Doesn't mean I wouldn't like a tag system.

http://www.goodreads.com/work/shelves/2116675 I know this contradicts what I said but I've found another problem: look at all the useless (from a recommendation standpoint) crap that people shelve the book as.

naptalan posted:

I see there is no horse-piss shelf at the moment. But there could be! All you need to do is shelve. :colbert:

Check again. :smug:

Irritated Goat
Mar 12, 2005

This post is pathetic.
This thread + GoodReads + the NPR sci-fi\fantasy flowchart means another ton of books to get through :( Why do all these books keep sounding so good? :cry: My poor time

edit: Oh god, now even GoodReads' ads are making me find new books. :gonk:

Irritated Goat fucked around with this message at 19:02 on Mar 9, 2012

AstroBravo
Jun 23, 2009
http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/7545960-astrobravo

I have been reading some varied stuff recently (thanks to goodreads and amazon recommendations) but I especially like post-apocalyptic stuff, East-Asian topics, Deaf culture, comics/graphic novels/manga, old books about Japan written by westerners, or anything else good.

Conduit for Sale!
Apr 17, 2007

Moeru posted:

This thread + GoodReads + the NPR sci-fi\fantasy flowchart means another ton of books to get through :( Why do all these books keep sounding so good? :cry: My poor time

edit: Oh god, now even GoodReads' ads are making me find new books. :gonk:

If it makes you feel better I just counted my bookshelf and I have like 65 unread books.

And my bookshelf will only hold like 60 of those haha. My latest Amazon order I've just had to leave in the box because there's nowhere to put any of them.

Evfedu
Feb 28, 2007
Yeah, I am a Glad Person now that my hundreds of book impulse buys all fit on my Kindle. gently caress moving house when you own books.

Flaggy
Jul 6, 2007

Grandpa Cthulu needs his napping chair



Grimey Drawer

Conduit for Sale! posted:

If it makes you feel better I just counted my bookshelf and I have like 65 unread books.

And my bookshelf will only hold like 60 of those haha. My latest Amazon order I've just had to leave in the box because there's nowhere to put any of them.

I feel your pain. My too read shelf has 98 books on it. I always see a book that looks interesting and I will drop it in there.

barkingclam
Jun 20, 2007
My account says I have 138 books to-read but there's no way that's accurate. I should probably prune it sometime.

naptalan
Feb 18, 2009
486 books on my to-read shelf. :blush: Only 288 books marked as read.

Hedrigall
Mar 27, 2008

by vyelkin
Oh god. I have about 350 books on my Bookdepository wishlist, plus 200 or so that I've actually bought and have yet to read. The majority of those are on shelves in the spare room of my house. In my bedroom I have a shelf of about 50 or 60 which are "to read soon"... and out of those I have a rotating list of 15-20 which I want to read in the next few months.

I have way too many loving books :negative:

Poutling
Dec 26, 2005

spacebunny to the rescue

Evfedu posted:

Yeah, I am a Glad Person now that my hundreds of book impulse buys all fit on my Kindle. gently caress moving house when you own books.


149 books on my to-read shelf. My main rule now is I won't buy a book unless it's available in e-format. There are some exceptions to the rule but it's few and far between. I sold 10 boxes of books from storage last year to pay for my wedding rings. You are so right about moving with books. It sucks. I've slowly whittled my physical collection down over time because my marriage might end if we have to move all those books again.

Punished Chuck
Dec 27, 2010

Conduit for Sale! posted:

If it makes you feel better I just counted my bookshelf and I have like 65 unread books.

And my bookshelf will only hold like 60 of those haha. My latest Amazon order I've just had to leave in the box because there's nowhere to put any of them.

I have the same issue: 108 books on my to-read shelf. And I don't use "to-read" as a wishlist, either, it's all books that I own but haven't gotten around to reading yet. My bookshelf is crammed full and I've got about 2 dozen books in little stacks all around my room. And those are just the ones I brought with me to college. :negative:

Until recently, I had crazed book-buying compulsions where I'd hop on Amazon or head down to Half Price Books and buy three--always exactly three--even though I knew I had a ton already backed up. Luckily whatever neurosis caused that has settled down before I end up being featured on the world's nerdiest episode of Hoarders.

AreYouStillThere
Jan 14, 2010

Well you're just going to have to get over that.
I wish I had friends that had as many books as you guys. I'm the only reader in my family and my group of friends rarely touch books. :(

Irritated Goat
Mar 12, 2005

This post is pathetic.
I did 14 books the day I posted that last comment. I'm sitting at around 80 to-read and slowly knocking them out. Only book I wish was in e-reader format was House of Leaves :(

Ornamented Death
Jan 25, 2006

Pew pew!

How the hell does House of Leaves even work as an ebook :psyduck:?

Quad
Dec 31, 2007

I've seen pogs you people wouldn't believe
One thing I learned about Goodreads that I should've already known, was that the book-specific forum threads are wretched. Catcher in the Rye has a thread about "I don't get it" and it's basically 30 pages of "Welp, obviously the book had no plot, Holden didn't do anything and it was a waste of time. THANKS FRESHMAN ENGLISH."... from, like everywhere between 18-45 year olds.
Now I'm not gonna say it's the best book of all time, and I understand that different literature speaks to different people... but god dammit. I know I'm raging because people have a different opinion than me, but it is THE WRONG OPINION.

Poutling
Dec 26, 2005

spacebunny to the rescue

Quad posted:

One thing I learned about Goodreads that I should've already known, was that the book-specific forum threads are wretched. Catcher in the Rye has a thread about "I don't get it" and it's basically 30 pages of "Welp, obviously the book had no plot, Holden didn't do anything and it was a waste of time. THANKS FRESHMAN ENGLISH."... from, like everywhere between 18-45 year olds.
Now I'm not gonna say it's the best book of all time, and I understand that different literature speaks to different people... but god dammit. I know I'm raging because people have a different opinion than me, but it is THE WRONG OPINION.

I bet that it would be a different story if you were looking into a forum for a novel that's a little more esoteric and not so widely read by 8th graders who were forced to read it for English class.

True story, while I was a poor starving university student I worked for a large chain bookstore. At least once a day I would have kids coming in requesting cliffs notes for the stupidest things. My favourites were:

1) That 'new poem by that guy Keats', you know, 'Ode to a Greekin' Urn'
2) Julia. Julia Caesar. By Shakespeare
3) Is this a library? Can I borrow as many cliffs notes as I want?

Chamberk
Jan 11, 2004

when there is nothing left to burn you have to set yourself on fire
I do wish there was better discussion on Goodreads. Finding people with similar tastes and commenting on their books is the best discussion I can find, but it would be nice to find topics about various books I've read. Otherwise I'm just reading a bunch of reviews.

barkingclam
Jun 20, 2007
You know what I love about Goodreads? Their bustling fanfiction section.

barkingclam fucked around with this message at 00:47 on Mar 14, 2012

Hedrigall
Mar 27, 2008

by vyelkin
Forget the fan fiction, I found the next great scifi author of our time!

quote:

The grateful guest went to the kitchen, grabbed some celery from the fridge as well as a glass of milk. The coolness of the veggies soothed his hungry stomach. He got a little water after he drank the milk because milk doesn’t do a good job quenching thirst.

“Thank you very much!” said the Alexander with absolute cheerfulness. The attack though still lingered in his heart with much fear. He was able to hide his anxiety without much difficulty.

Hedrigall fucked around with this message at 00:55 on Mar 14, 2012

barkingclam
Jun 20, 2007

Hedrigall posted:

Forget the fan fiction, I found the next great scifi author of our time!

Hey cool, ulillillia wrote a new novel!

naptalan
Feb 18, 2009

naptalan posted:

That being said, there are a few changes to the shelving system I'd like to see which would make Goodreads a thousand times better:
- The ability to cross reference "horse-piss" and "shipwrecks" to find all books about horses pissing on crashed ships


Oh hey so I just found out you can totally do this! Underneath your list of shelves in "My Books", there's an option to "select multiple".

Irritated Goat
Mar 12, 2005

This post is pathetic.

Ornamented Death posted:

How the hell does House of Leaves even work as an ebook :psyduck:?
I had no idea it deviated from standard books. Seems I'll need to find a copy to see

Invicta{HOG}, M.D.
Jan 16, 2002

Moeru posted:

I had no idea it deviated from standard books. Seems I'll need to find a copy to see

It's pretty much required to be read in paper format.

reflir
Oct 29, 2004

So don't. Stay here with me.
An ebook of House of Leaves would be better than a physical copy if it were set up like a wiki.

reflir fucked around with this message at 14:03 on Mar 14, 2012

Blurred
Aug 26, 2004

WELL I WONNER WHAT IT'S LIIIIIKE TO BE A GOOD POSTER

reflir posted:

An ebook of House of Leaves would be better than a physical copy if it were set up like a wiki.

I think this is one thing that I'm really looking forward to with ebooks, especially as the technology gets better and more widely accepted. There are some things you'll be able to do with ebooks that you could never do with a printed version and I think there really has the potential to forge new genres in the hands of creative authors.

The ipad version of Dawkins' new book is a good example of what can be done with existing technology, but it's pretty exciting to think what else might come in the future.

PureRok
Mar 27, 2010

Good as new.
Does anyone know why books occasionally have their amount of pages go away? It completely ruins the graphs and makes visual progress on their website not really work out.

Example:

The Sword of Shannara Trilogy



Back in January they had the amount of pages in the book, since you can see that when I put the page I was on in they put the %, but in March it doesn't do that. The reverse is true, as well; if I put in a percent, they don't put in a page number.

barkingclam
Jun 20, 2007
They purged their site of a lot of book information a while back because an agreement with Amazon lapsed out or something. A bunch of my books got merged with other editions, too.

uh zip zoom
May 28, 2003

Sensitive Thugs Need Hugs

is there a somethingawful-based group here? Goonreads, or whatever?

AreYouStillThere
Jan 14, 2010

Well you're just going to have to get over that.
There's a few - none of them are especially active though. Try this one.

FridayNightFights
Feb 17, 2011
I had no idea that sites like this existed. :aaaaa: I plan to try and use this as a way to spur me back into reading. Going from a 3-4 books a month to a 3 a year type of person due to the VIDJAH GAMES has kinda been a secret shame of mine for a while now. Only one person I know uses the site apparently, so feel free to add me, make recommendations, etc. Don't expect too much, as I tend to reread stuff I really like rather than burn through new stuff very quickly.

http://www.goodreads.com/bmcr

Country_Blumpkin
Aug 6, 2011

.

Country_Blumpkin fucked around with this message at 22:50 on Dec 3, 2012

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Walamor
Dec 31, 2006

Fork 'em Devils!
This site is awesome, I will try to keep up with my reading on this! Friended up to my max per day, I'd be happy to give recommendations! Mostly read fantasy/sci-fi with a smattering of other books that seem interesting/get recommended to me.

http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/8515719-alex-c

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